BWAC success and Euro Adventure

The BWAC show nailed comes to a close this weekend. I had a lot of and I think it was a huge success. I didn't sell any work but my one piece in the auction was bid on, so I'm happy. I'm really looking forward to to the summer and fall shows, "Red Hooked" and "Lineage" respectively. For "Red Hooked" I think I'm going to print out a couple of didital images I've taken in Red Hook and frame them. And for the "Lineage" I will definitely exhibit my Family series.

Here are a couple of images I'm thinking of printing for "Red Hooked"

I just got back from an awesome Euro adventure but I haven't developed any film yet or sorted through the various digital images I took. I did sketch a bit too and I'll scan some of the sketches in the near future. I went to a ton of museums while I was there, in Brussels I went to the Musées Royaux des Beaux, which includes the Historical Art Museum, The Modern Art Museum and The Magritte Museum. The Magritte Museum was amazing but I really liked the Historical Art Museum which housed an amazing collection from Northern Renaissance painters like Steen, Bosch, Hals, Rubens and many more. The Modern Art Museum was severly disappointing, it was in the basement and was laid out strangely. The colloection wasn't all that impressive except for the works by Ensor.

In Paris I went back to the Musee d'Orsay. A lot of the museum is under construction and some key pieces are not on display. However it made up for it with the insanly awesome exhibit "Crime and Punishment." the exhibit had paintings depicting various crimes (ie. the Death of Marat), an actual guillitine, paintings by prisoners in jail, drawings and plans of the Panopticon jail preposed by Breton. Crime scene photographs, death masks of criminals, penny dreadfuls and posters and newspapers including woodcuts of horrible headlines. It was morbid and awesome, extremely powerful and kind of gross all at once. I definitely reccomment paying the extra euro or two to go see it if you're in Paris.

Amsterdam had the most museums I wanted to go to, The Van Gogh Museum, the Rembrandt House and Museum and the Rijksmuseum. All were amazing I mean the Rijksmuseum had a ton of Rembrandts including the Night Watch, Vermeer, Hals and other Dutch masters. The Van Gogh museum was great, as expected but the Rembranthouse was a lot of fun. It was pretty cool to see his studio and his bed and everything, they also have galleries. They had a great show on early Dutch photography and they had a room with a selection of Rembrant's prints.

Bruges was really beautiful and ridiculously picturesque. I feel like nobody actually lives in Bruges except fairies and unicorns. Bruges had the Groeninge Museum, interesting colloction of local medieval artists and even Belgian modern artists. The Memling Museum in the Hospital of Saint John completely blew me away. The paintinfs and various artefacts from its days as a hospital were fascinating, the Memling museum was amazing, and they had on loan from the Groeninge Museum one of Bosh's famous altarpieces. all of this in a church-like setting, for kids they had medieval coloring books set up on drawing horses with colored pencils. The were scenes from the bible and scenes from the hospital, it was kind of great coloring in Nuns taking care of maimed people. In the upstairs there was this very powerful exhibition by an artist in residence on the "foundlings" since St. Johns was also a foundling hospital.

All in all the museums in Belguim, Amsterdam and Paris were a ton of fun, I prpbably spent 70 euros in postcards and another 40 in Museum entrance fees but it was well worth it!